


oops

by sky_reid



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Concerts, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Queer Character, Teenagers, can you believe this has 2.5k because i can't, oh hey perfect tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 20:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4719518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_reid/pseuds/sky_reid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au where harry and louis met at the concert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oops

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ostricacida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ostricacida/gifts).



> laura asked me what it would've been like if harry and louis met at the script and well. this happened. on whatsapp. what even is my life.

Louis isn’t even sure if he wants to go anymore. Like, sure he’s driving already and there’s a ticket in his wallet in the glove compartment but he’s not as excited as he thought he would be. It’s been a shit day right from the start to be honest, from getting caught in the downpour that morning to the twins being absolutely insufferable all day to the incredibly awkward run-in with Hannah to everybody backing out of tagging along with him and he’s just. He’s not in the mood. Which is a shame really, because he loves The Script, has been looking forward to seeing them for months now, and now that the day is finally here he’s afraid he’s not gonna enjoy it as much as he’d hoped.

 

It’s chilly and grey outside, looks like it might rain and wouldn’t that just be Louis' luck. It’s not easy to find a parking spot but then, Louis anticipated that, came early so he could park a little ways away and walk to the venue. There’s already a decent sized crowd gathered at the front and spilling out through the nearby streets, young people in band t-shirts and denim vests, people Louis doesn’t know but feels some kind of connection with nonetheless. It’s the first positive thing he’s felt all day since waking up and realising what day it was.

 

Security is pretty light and he gets in quickly enough, buys an overpriced beer at the stand inside and finds a place close to the stage where he’ll be able to see and hear well without the fear of being crushed by the mass of bodies behind him. There’s still a good two hours before the concert is even scheduled to start so he takes a leaf from the hippy book and sits down cross legged on cold concrete.

 

There’s a group of girls sitting near him, all of them with dozens of wristbands on their arms and oddly placed hats. One of them catches his eye and waves. He smiles at her but even he can tell it’s a bit cold and distant. The girl goes back to talking to her friends like he’s not even there. That’s alright though because Louis doesn’t really want to talk to anyone right now anyway.

 

He pulls his phone out and replies to the increasingly panicked texts from Stan and shoots one off to his mum. He kills time playing snake on his phone and sipping his beer. He doesn’t look up even though he can feel a crowd forming. There’s a growing excitement in the air, the kind of positive nerves that suffuse a crowd before an event but Louis is numb to it all. He thinks, when he looks back at this, he’ll be sad about it, about not enjoying these moments, about not blending into the crowd and sharing this with them. It’s everything he loves about gigs – the anticipation, the growing excitement in his stomach, the feeling that he’s a part of a larger living entity connected through their love for something. He just can’t feel it right then. It’ll be better when they actually start. Or so he tells himself.

 

He’s finishing his beer when someone bumps into him from behind. He’s been lucky so far, nose buried in his screen being a pretty obvious sign to everyone around him. He looks over his shoulder, finds himself facing a pretty girl. She’s holding a beer too, one perfectly manicured hand extended to him in apology. She looks giggly and happy, eyes shining and lips curved in a smile, dimples in her cheeks. Even before she apologises through a smile Louis finds himself smiling back and shaking off her silent offer to buy him another beer. He thinks maybe if she wanted to speak to him he might be interested but she sees someone else in the crowd, stands on her tippy toes and waves at them energetically. And then she’s gone and Louis loses her in the thickening crowd.

 

By the time the opening act is starting though, Louis does feel better. There’s a lot more people than he anticipated and the energy is infectious. Louis is bouncing on his feet a little and smiling at nothing in particular. He scans the crowd, sees a few faces he vaguely recognises from God knows where. Yet, somehow, his eyes end up on someone he doesn’t know at all.

 

There is a boy standing not too far away from him, a little further away from the stage and a bit towards the other side of it, and he’s just one more face in the crowd, one more teenage body swaying to the song it doesn’t know the words to, he’s not even wearing anything special, shouldn’t and doesn’t stand out in any way, but to Louis it’s almost like he’s the only shining star in a cloudy night sky. Everything and everyone else around him fades and blends together like paint watered down too much until only the boy remains, the single clear sharp point of the entire picture.

 

The boy turns slightly towards him, meets his eyes almost like he too is feeling this inexplicable magnetic pull that’s tugging at Louis low in his stomach. His eyes are light, green Louis thinks, but it’s too dark and they are too far away to tell for sure. He’s already smiling when he looks at Louis, full pink lips stretched wide in a grin that looks like it could split his face in two if he smiled even just a little bit wider. His expression changes slowly, softens somehow, like he’s looking at something incredibly beautiful and rare and lovely, not something like. Not Louis.

 

But even when Louis smiles (because he can’t not) and gives a tentative wave, the boy keeps smiling, smiling at _him_ , open and gentle, and waves back without hesitation. They stay like that, looking at each other, the world around them bleeding away, until someone comes between them and the spell breaks. Louis feels suddenly off balance, as if he’s spent his whole entire life in silence and without colour then unexpectedly found the most beautiful note and the perfect shade of purple only to be thrown into a pot of cacophony and muddy brown.

 

He has a hard time focusing on the performance again. The band is okay, nothing special; Louis doesn’t even know them and won’t look them up after this. He can’t stop thinking about that boy (silly and foolish, he’s only seen him for a brief moment and from afar), the mental image of his smile, the slight shadow of a dimple, the shining eyes. It both makes him sad not be seeing it all anymore and fills him with an incredible sense of lightness and simple happiness.

 

It all falls away the moment The Script start their set. With the first note of the first song Louis feels almost like he’s shedding all the negativity, the greyness of the day falling off him like a discarded shell. All the excitement and buzz and happiness that he hasn’t felt up till then hit him at once and he starts jumping up and down, screaming the lyrics out at the top of his lungs, waving his hands in the air. With every song that passes he wonders if the boy with the curls and the dimples is also jumping around and dancing, if this is his favourite song, if he knows all the lyrics by heart, if he also has a poster of Danny O’Donoghue taped to the inside of his closet door, who he’s here with (for he must be there with someone, looked far too young to be on his own).

 

It’s during The Man Who Can’t Be Moved, Louis' personal favourite, that someone puts a large warm hand on his shoulderblade. Louis wouldn’t mind really, it’s a concert, there’s a lot of touching and not a lot of personal space, but it’s his favourite song and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.

 

He turns around and finds the boy with the green eyes and the pretty curls standing right beside him. Up close he looks even younger, baby-faced with his wide-set eyes and full lips and chubby cheeks with dimples in them. He makes Louis' heart flutter in his chest. “Hey,” he says, or Louis thinks he says that. He can’t hear over the noise of the music and the people around them. The hand on his back gives it a rub before disappearing.

 

“Hi!” Louis says, shouts really. The boy is looking at his lips and Louis feels a shiver run down his spine. The boy might just be trying to read what he’s saying because he can’t hear him or he might just be very forward. Louis has never really _wanted_ a boy to be so forward with him in public but he wants this one.

 

There’s a long-nailed hand being waved between them. It’s the girl who bumped into him earlier. Louis smiles at her. She’s saying something glossy lips moving to form words but Louis can’t hear her so he just waves back. He’s turned away from the stage, is missing his favourite song in fact, but it doesn’t seem to matter much when the boy leans a little forward and starts to say what Louis thinks is “Hi, I’m—“

 

Someone must bump into him from behind then because he pitches forward suddenly, his wet lips and soft cheek sliding over Louis'. Louis feels like an electric current runs through him at the contact. He’s always been tactile with people, has always loved being close to people he likes and has definitely always preferred boys to girls even though he didn’t like to show that, at least not back home, but he’s not at home now, he’s in Manchester, and this boy is something else; he’s never been this responsive, not even with a boy so he just. Lets it happen. Doesn’t even try to stop the pleasant shiver that runs through his body.

 

The boy moves away just as the song is ending. “Oops,” he says and this time Louis hears. For the first time, he hears the boy’s voice, smooth and sweet like the rest of him, his words words that drip slowly and sluggishly like honey or melted chocolate.

 

“Hi, Oops,” Louis replies. It’s the worst joke he’s ever made and that’s saying something but the boy laughs like it’s brilliant, hand on his stomach and head thrown back and all. Louis has never wanted to kiss someone more. He thinks. He thinks he might maybe possibly, if the boy wants, if they stay a bit after the concert’s over, if everything goes right. He’s never done that before, impulsively jumped into something with a boy (one whose name he still doesn’t even know) but then, he’s never reacted so viscerally to someone before either. “Louis,” he says with his hand extended towards the boy. “Nice to meet you, Oops.”

 

The boy grins at him and grasps his hand. “It’s Harry, actually.”

 

“Ah, apologies, Harry Actually,” Louis replies with a wink. Harry smiles just like Louis hoped he would. He registers as if through a fog that behind him Danny is talking, probably thanking the fans or mentioning the new album. Louis honestly doesn’t even care. Harry still hasn’t let go of his hand.

 

“I’m Gemma by the way,” the girl behind Harry throws in. Louis can practically hear the eyeroll in her voice. “I’m this dork’s sister.” Louis nods even though he barely registers the words.

 

“I’ve missed my favourite song for you,” Harry says as he lets go of Louis' hand.

 

“Bit romantic innit, Curly?” Louis teases but it’s not a joke to him because it can’t be a coincidence that they have the same favourite song, that it was during that song they met. That’s all a bit. Too much. So he doesn’t say it.

 

Harry blushes, colour tinting the round apples of his cheeks but he doesn’t back down. He shrugs and replies, “Maybe.”

 

Louis spends the rest of the concert half watching the stage and half looking at Harry flushed and grinning next to him, singing every song even when he doesn’t know the right lyrics, dancing stupidly and just enjoying himself. He’s a mesmerising distraction and a reminder to enjoy the moment at the same time. He’s. He’s a lot.

 

Louis knows he’s staring sometimes, knows Gemma knows he is, knows Harry catches him a few times but he can’t stop. Besides he likes how it makes Harry light up every time he notices. There’s a moment when Harry’s hand slides down Louis’ back to rest on his waist, gentle and hesitant like Harry’s ready to play it off as moving with the crowd. Louis puts an arm around his shoulders instead.

 

They go to McDonald’s after the concert. It’s the only thing open so late that Harry can legally get into (a fact Louis is decidedly _not_ thinking about). They share fries and milkshakes, Gemma on one side of the booth and Louis and Harry on the other, their thighs pressed together and arms brushing every time they reach for their food. It’s already past two in the morning when they part, Gemma complaining she’ll fall asleep behind the wheel if they don’t hurry and Harry all but nodding off with his head resting against Louis' shoulder.

 

Louis doesn’t get to kiss Harry that night, not the way he wants, just a lingering press of dry lips on Harry’s forehead and a wet smear on his cheek where Harry presses his mouth, but he does have a new number programmed into his phone under the name Harry Styles :) and a skip in his step and a lightness in his chest and he thinks going to the concert after all might have been the best decision he’d ever made.

 

Years later Louis will love to say it was the easiest thing in the world to reply to Harry’s text a few days later, to arrange to meet him in Manchester again, to tell Hannah that there’s no way they are getting back together because he’s in love with a boy, to hold Harry’s hand in the middle of a crowded restaurant.

 

It’s not though. It all makes his heart race and his palms sweat and his breath come short even when there’s no one to see him, even when they’re around people who don’t know them, even when he knows that he wants it. It all feels like a monumental, life-changing decision. But in the end he does it. And that’s what matters.

 

And when he’s queuing for the auditions for The X Factor, Harry is there with him joking and laughing and practising and holding his hand as they walk in and giving him reassuring kisses moments before he goes on stage. Harry is there to watch his audition and cheer him on and celebrate with him when they both go through and when Louis kisses him with the cameras still on them, well. It _is_ easy.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading :)
> 
> you can find me [on tumblr](captivekinqs.tumblr.com)


End file.
